The Individualisation Lectures feature scholars from various disciplines presenting and discussing their current research on the topic of individualisation. The interdisciplinay lectures take place in hybrid format either at the University of Münster or Bielefeld University and are open to anyone interested in the subject inside and outside the universities.
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Abstract
Genetically identical animals reared in a shared enriched environment nonetheless diverge, progressively and stably, in behavior and in markers of structural plasticity, demonstrating that development itself is a source of individual differences. This raises the question how human individuals come to differ, and how are those differences sustained and ultimately preserved across the lifespan. I will propose that individualization arises from the coupling of gene-environment correlations with recurring cycles of experience-dependent plasticity. Building on the expansion–exploration–selection–refinement theory of plasticity and a multifactorial gene–environment model of expert performance, I suggest that coordinated, cumulative plasticity cycles yield person-specific, hierarchically organized skills. Individuality is neither the imprint of environment on a passive organism nor the unfolding of a genetic program, but a genetically informed process of self-organization.
